From message history to State Persistence: a user-driven Ably feature evolution

The global demand for realtime data is rapidly increasing due to the growing user preference for realtime digital experiences such as virtual events, news, financial information, and IoT devices. Ably, a platform providing realtime infrastructure, has observed this surge in demand firsthand. Initially, users required realtime updates only for specific features like notifications. However, over time, their applications expanded to include entire platforms and services. To cater to the evolving user demands, Ably introduced Channel Rewind, which allows users to access previous messages upon connection. This feature reduces latency and bandwidth usage by enabling fewer API calls. Additionally, State Persistence was developed to persist the last message on a channel for up to 1 year, addressing the need for state modeling in distributed systems. State Persistence can be particularly useful in scenarios like eCommerce shopping carts or serverless function configurations, where users expect their data to remain intact even after temporary disconnections. By leveraging Ably's State Persistence feature, developers can build dependable realtime applications with versatile APIs and scalability guarantees.